Herb Chambers donates $100 million to expand Mass General Hospital

Almost everyone has lost friends or family members to cancer. But few people have the financial resources to do anything meaningful about the disease.

However, auto magnate Herb Chambers has amassed considerable wealth over the years by running his eponymous car dealership group, the largest in New England. And now the self-made billionaire is putting that money toward the fight against cancer by making the largest donation of his life: a $100 million donation to Massachusetts General Hospital for the naming rights to a new tower where the The hospital’s cancer center will be housed in the cancer center.

The donation announced Wednesday is intended to help with construction costs; It is one of the largest donations ever received by Mass General Brigham, MGH’s parent organization. That’s why MGH will name the east tower of the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building the Herb Chambers Tower, a nearly 1 million-square-foot structure rising on Cambridge Street as part of MGH’s main campus. When completed in three years, the hospital plans to consolidate its inpatient and outpatient cancer care in the tower and conduct significant cancer research.

Chambers, 83, has recently seen several friends die of cancer, including philanthropist Jack Connors and car dealer Dave McDermott.

His own success story is already known. This humble Dorchester boy started his copy machine sales business in his early twenties after previously working in the US Navy. He made millions by selling it at the age of 36 and then used that money to start over, first by buying a car dealership in New London, Connecticut and gradually turning it into the automotive empire it is today.

“Financially, I did well,” Chambers said. “I owe so much to Massachusetts, the people who are my customers here. You gave me everything I have. … I want to give something back for what I received.”

In recent years, Chambers struck up a friendship with David Brown, president of academic medical centers at Mass General Brigham. As a patient, Chambers said he is already a big fan of MGH and what he believes is its consistently courteous and caring staff. Brown took Chambers on a tour in January, It gave him a deeper insight into the hospital and made him even more impressed. Chambers and Brown said the naming rights deal came about several months ago; MGH kept it secret until the donation was announced this week.

“I thought, boy, if we could do this together, what a wonderful way to bring together the legacies of two really incredible local institutions,” Brown said. “We’re really building the tower … so that everything the patient needs – from the initial consultation to biopsy imaging, other procedures, lab tests, surgeries, infusions, inpatient care, intensive care, short-term care – (is) all within the tower.”

If all goes as planned, the new tower will open around the time that Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s long-standing oncology partnership with MGH affiliate Brigham and Women’s Hospital takes effect. is scheduled to end in 2028. Dana- Farber said last year that she was leaving that partnership to work with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to build a new cancer center in the Longwood Medical Area.

Brown noted that MGH has been planning the $1.9 billion, 2 million-square-foot Ragon Building project for years, long before Dana-Farber and Brigham’s divorce was announced. But Brown admits that the timing of the project is a happy coincidence for MGB. When it opens, Chambers Tower will have 228 acute care beds and 32 intensive care beds. The MGB recently announced a new initiative to coordinate cancer care across all of its hospitals and clinics. Chambers Tower will be the home of this initiative.

Both Brown and Chambers hope that cures for cancer will be discovered in the new building, along with medications and therapies that can make life easier with cancers that cannot be completely cured.

“I think we can make a difference,” Chambers said. “Someday there will be a cure for cancer. It has to be.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.